Tag: Simple Life

Solitude is bliss. It is one of the most empowering feelings I’ve ever experienced. Life as a recluse taught me that solitude and loneliness are two very different experiences and that being alone does not necessarily mean being lonely. As a matter of fact, I found that loneliness is much closer to alienation than it is to solitude and alienation is experienced when there are other people around. If you go recluse on the society, you’ll give it no opportunity to single you out and make you feel isolated which in turn eliminates any chances of feeling lonely.

Photo: The Bliss of Solitude

Henry David Thoreau, great writer and philosopher who spent 2 years living in voluntary isolation by Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts said it best:

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.

As you shun society, you are compensated with peace and develop appreciation of it. The abundance of time and beauty that surround you will inspire peaceful inner experiences which are laced with incredibly uplifting spirits. I found that time away in solitude is very rejuvenating and boosts both health and happiness.

Allow your mind to quiet down and you’ll see your heart grow more than it ever did before. When you are alone, there is nobody there to judge you and point fingers at you. You can be yourself the way you’re meant to be. Solitude is a great way to awaken your inner child and open up to wonderment you last experienced when you were little.

Feel your soul awaken to health, purity and harmony and let your internal energy sources catch new breath. It will force you into solidarity with yourself and give you a fresh new passion to live and make use of your time. And in the end you’ll understand that being outwardly deprived is very inwardly enriching.

My experience with solitude helped me become more humble and come to terms with many of my life’s issues. I haven’t completely settled down with myself yet, but this was just me getting my feet wet. I now understand how many lessons one can learn from a lifestyle of simplicity and purity and I’m not gonna stop learning after just one chapter.

When you are alone, when you are standing there face to face with yourself and nature is the only thing to judge the duel, you are reminded of birth, death and interdependence. The modern society obstacles that prevented you from manifesting your true self no longer exist. You gain complete immunity to the inner tension forced upon you by the world you used to be a part of.

Here in the wild, you are not judged. Being alone does not mean you’re lonesome, having nothing does not mean you’re poor, letting go does not mean you’re weak. Here in the wild, whisper can roar as loudly as thunder. The best way to dislike someone is to live with them. So go out and experience the bliss of solitude for yourself.

The technological revolution marked the transformation of the way of life for most of the Earth’s human inhabitants from agricultural to industrial. It finalized our migration away from the simple life and into a world of electrical devices and antidepressants. Instead of growing our own food, we slave our lives away in factories in order to earn money for which we buy food doped up with growth hormones and shelf life extending agents.

Photo: Remote Canadian Wilderness Where I Had My Initial Run at the Return to the Simple Life

An introduction of technology into our lives came with a promise of easier living that would afford us “more free time”. And many modern technological devices truly delivered. Take washing machine for example – getting 5 kg of clothes properly washed by hand would take at least an hour of arduous labor. But now that we have washing machines and electricity, all one needs is a few short minutes to load the machine up, add laundry detergent and press a button or two. While your laundry is being washed, you are free to do whatever you want because washing machines take care of business automatically, without wearing your back and knuckles out.

However if you take a look at our technological advances as a whole, you’ll notice that while they do make our lives easier and buy us free time by turning otherwise arduous and lengthy chores into a stint of pressing a few buttons, they also seem to speed the time in which we live up, leaving us feeling pressured, like there never are enough hours in our days to catch up with our lives. We have all these devices that save us time by doing work for us, yet there’s constantly so much more to do we feel overloaded and stressed out. We have indeed become the tools of our tools.

The complexity of our lives as of late, despite all these gadgets that are supposed to make them easier, has become rather dizzying. So what gives? What went wrong that we have to work our lives toward simple now? Is way back – a rewind, so to speak – fathomable? Cause I already have an answer to whether it’s doable. I’m just unsure whether general, dumbed down public that’s so addicted to filtered reality still has the wits to understand that the path I’m undertaking, the path that takes me back to the basics, back to the time when human identity was defined by what one does, and not by what one owns (Jimmy Carter, anyone?), is a path that’ll free me from the life I’ve planned, so I can have the life I’m meant to live.

The beginning of every unwritten book starts today. As Socrates suggested, many are the thyrsus bearers, but few are the mystics. There will always be ill wishers, there will always be someone who’ll tell you that the path you are taking is wrong. The trick is in finding courage to not give in to the temptation to believe it. Walk with confidence towards the star that shines the brightest for you. Simple life simplifies the universal laws by which we live. Simplify your life and the universe will respond in kind. And as you return to the simple life, you’ll realize that the more things you live without, the richer you are.